


Misfit Toys

by femme4jack



Series: The Tales of Recline the Berthformer [4]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:43:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme4jack/pseuds/femme4jack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love what I am, and do not wish to change that.  My kind were not always simply toys for the alphamechs."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misfit Toys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fractalserpentine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fractalserpentine/gifts), [sphinx01](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphinx01/gifts).



> **Content:** Tactile and PnP intimacy, references to slavery
> 
> More [Recline the Berthformer](http://femme4jack.livejournal.com/141144.html). The first part of this (up to the first section break) was written within the time allowance for tf_speedwriting prompt _lovers against adversity. Two (or more) characters who pursue a relationship despite the fact they're really not meant to._ More angst and less berthy fluff this time :C
> 
>  _For the purpose of this fic, the following definitions are used:_  
>  Mechling - A fully upgraded mech who is still in training and has not yet taken on the full responsibilities and privileges of their function.  
> Clade - A group of cohorts that are related in some manner (i.e. a common coding lineage, a set of alliances or a shared hierarchy. Among the alphamechs, they functioned somewhat as a cartel, with powerful members strictly governing the cohorts within them).  
> Cohort - A small family-like grouping of mechs that serve a common purpose.

Mirage arrived back at Iridium Tower far earlier than had been planned, irritably wiping the soot and other particulates off his finish in the crystaline vestibule before snapping at the door guardian to clean up the mess. The heavily armored servant scrambled to do so, not even waiting for Iridium to dispatch a cleaning drone as Mirage swept into the express lift to his clade's levels.

The mechling was furious. The market opening where he was to have represented his clade had been postponed due to civil unrest just two levels below the merchant district. Word of that, however, had never reached him. After a haughty exchange via comms with the merchant cohort his clade had entrusted with the market, Mirage had determined that the message had been accidentally routed to the second of the two mechlings who inhabited his cohort's suite. Synergy, out of jealousy, spite, or sheer neglect, had chosen not to relay word to his co-creation.

Because of that, Mirage had made a fool of himself, showing up diligently early for the opening in order to inspect the preparations. It was to be his first outing as an official representative of his clade's substantial power. Instead, he was firmly turned away by the enforcers who berated him for venturing into a volatile area. They had insisted on sending three of their company to escort him back to a more secure district, and had threatened to report him to his clade for failure to travel without the appropriate guardian servant. Never mind that Mirage's pattern disruptor was far better security than anything a slow-processing guardian mech or bulky enforcer could provide. 

Mirage was seething as the door slid shut behind him to his cohort's suite (part of the clade compound respectably midway up Iridium). Certainly news would filter back to his own clade and their neighbor/rivals that Mirage had shown up in a merchant district in the middle of a riot. It would be an embarrassment, and it would be some time before he would be given official clade duties again. 

He scanned the suite in search of Synergy, duly noting the absence of the servants, but putting little thought to it. The elder members of his cohort were off-world on a tour of a colony his clade had funded, and the servants had likely used Mirage's planned absence as an opportunity to visit staff of neighboring suites or care for their own affairs. Later, Mirage would ascertain who had done so improperly and deal with them accordingly. For now, his chief concern was locating Synergy. As the first-sparked among the cohort's two junior members, it was his responsibility to discipline Synergy for his oversight in the face of the elder members' absence. 

Just outside Synergy's quarters, Mirage froze. There were audible, static-filled moans coming from within. Mirage was not unaccustomed to such noises. Mechlings like himself and Synergy were tutored in such practices by pleasure servants in preparation for formally bonding with their own or another cohort, or founding a new one. Such a session would never take place without one of the cohort elders present, though. Casual liaisons among Iridium mechs were permitted only after formal cohort bonding had taken place.

Yet, there was every indication of one such casual liaison happening in Synergy's quarters, and judging by the sounds, whoever was involved would not even notice if Mirage stepped through the door. The mechling did not wish to take any chance on that, though. He signaled for a cleaning drone to enter first, activating his pattern disrupter before following it, only to forcibly cut off a hiss at what met his sensors within.

Synergy was engaged in passionate interfacing, vents wide, cables deep, and hands everywhere – all from beneath his cohort's berthformer (a prized mechling servant, relatively new, whose code-donor and mentor had been given to their clade by Sentinel himself as a sign of the Prime's favor). The servant's long, flexible arms and cables wrapped the smaller alphamech who lay stretched beneath him on the unsparked berth. The long-limbed mech captured Synergy's mouth in a circuit-melting kiss even as several of his prehensile charging cables sparked as they delved into the armor gaps to the protoform beneath. It was a shock for Mirage to even see the berthformer in his mech mode, much less making love to his co-creation. The rules by which that class functioned were strict and certain. Only during off-duty cycles and only among other servants did berthformers transform to root mode. They most certainly were not ever supposed to be _on top_ of the alphamechs they recharged.

Not that Synergy was doing anything approaching recharge while he moaned, clung to, and slid against the servant atop him, plasma now dancing across their plating. Mirage knew he should stop them, should send for the guardians to expel the berthformer from their suite and Iridium tower itself. Yet he could only watch, mesmerized by the way the berthformer, even in his mech mode, so thoroughly held and surrounded Synergy, practically melding himself to the mech beneath him as their fields flared wide in an overload that took Mirage to his knees with a moan of his own. 

Not that either of the two lovers were in any condition to hear him.

There could be no question about what they were. This was no casual liaison. While the berthformer's meshy armor could easily match another's shape, Synergy's could not, and yet had formed its own connections like an intricate puzzle with the servant's in a manner that only took place between long trusted lovers and cohortmates. Mirage was stunned by the difference between the intimacy he had just witnessed and what he had been exposed to in his own tutoring sessions. By comparison, the latter was cold and sterile, only the motions of what he had just seen.

"Merge with me," Synergy begged as he and the berthformer stirred from their post-overload shut down.

"You know I can't do that, Syn. I want to, more than anything, but if we are ever caught that would mean my deactivation."

"Then let's leave! Go start somewhere new where we can bond and be cohort. I can access some funds, get us to a colony world where lineage isn't as important."

"Syn..." the berthformer had to reset his vocalizer, dipping in for a gentle kiss on Synergy's forehelm while he did so. "You don't know what you are saying. You've never been without full maintenance, never had to do a grueling shift on a half ration of low grade so depleted it hardly deserves to be called energon. We both have it _good_ here. Neither of us are equipped for life out there. Besides, you were built to remain in the cohort that owns me. Mirage is the one being groomed to found a new one. You'll _always_ have me."

"Not the way I want to," Synergy murmured into the berthformer's neck cabling. 

"Someday, you'll be an elder in this clade, and you can do anything you want. I can wait, Synergy. You have me no matter what... did you hear something?"

"Just a cleaning drone," Synergy murmured as Mirage left his co-creation's quarters.

* * *

"You are avoiding me," Recline said with gentle firmness to the former alphamech. It had taken the berthformer six full decaorns to corner the spy in the Iacon base.

"I do not wish to engage your services," Mirage said stiffly.

"I'm not offering them. But we still should talk about it, at least," the berthformer replied.

"What is there to talk about?" Mirage hissed, grabbing Recline's arm and pulling him back into the now empty conference room for privacy from the others who were surreptitiously watching them. "You have every reason to despise me. I lost you your position, had you shamed and turned out."

"You thought it was your duty. The cohort left you in charge and responsible. And, you saved my life. I would have been there when Iridium fell. I never would have willingly left Synergy or the cohort I was coded to serve."

"I should have warned him I knew," Mirage's vocalizer crackled with emotion. "I should have protected you both, or helped you escape together like Synergy wanted."

Recline gave Mirage a searching look, then seemed to sink into his own armor. "Mirage," he began softly, "I missed Synergy deeply, for a very long time. He was the first lover I ever had who wanted me as a mech rather than a berth. But he also lived by the power of his own choices. Had he truly wished to, he could have followed me, found me. He didn't," Recline said with calm acceptance. "I come to know mechs profoundly well when they recharge on me regularly, and I knew even then that Synergy would not have left. He had at least four different lovers among the clade staff, and talked to all of them about bonding or escaping or both."

"He was using you," Mirage said, his optics cycling with the realization.

"I was never bothered by it. I'm not coded for exclusivity. Taking servants as lovers was Syn's way of escaping what he did not have the courage to truly leave. I loved him enough to understand that."

"You are too understanding. Too forgiving. This war will consume you," Mirage said bitterly, drawing away from the field that was so openly inviting his own.

"There is little point to holding on to pain, Mirage. If there is anything I have learned, it is to live in the present, and not haunted by past hurt or hung up on future plans. Good can come from even the worst circumstances by the choices we make. I may have left Iridium shamed, but I was no longer a slave. For the first time I made my own way, my own choices."

Mirage silently stared at his cohort's former servant... no, slave, he corrected himself. The glyph Recline had used was accurate, even if it was never said in the towers. 

"What did you do," he finally asked quietly, "after you were expelled? I will confess I never even wondered until now."

"It was bad for awhile," Recline admitted, the briefest haunted look crossing his expression. "Very bad. A dismissal from Iridium follows a mech. I couldn't even find work in a pleasure house, and as mechs here point out so frequently, my defenses are laughable. I was fortunate, though," he added quickly before Mirage could interject with self-recrimination. "My code-lineage goes back to those of my frametype that were medic-class rather than pleasure-class. I eventually found my way to a medic instructor at the Academy who was code-kin, a recharge and spark disorder specialist. He was able to purge my record and call in some favors. I became his assistant of sorts. I couldn't train to be a full medic without a major reformat, and I considered that, but, I was sparked for the right function. I love what I am, and do not wish to change that. My kind were not always simply toys for the alphamechs."

Mirage flinched. "I'm sorry, Recline. For so many things." 

Recline flared his field slightly, just enough to show Mirage that he was not angry. "Mirage, none of us are responsible for where we happened to be sparked, what we were created as, only for the choices we make afterwards within the parameters and limitations of our own coding. You did as you were coded and trained to believe was right, and had no functioning experience to tell you otherwise. As I said, I wouldn't be here to have this conversation with you if you hadn't expelled me." Recline paused for a moment, drew in a deep vent before flaring his field wider, sharing more openly the true extent of his feelings. "You are welcome to visit my office, any time Mirage. It would... bring me contentment to fulfill my function with one of the mechs I was sparked and coded to do so with, as a free mech rather than a slave. I can tell by your field that recharge is not easy for you. I will never stop caring for your clade, and you are the last of them."

"You still have loyalty coding," Mirage said, putting the pieces together. "I can release you from that."

Recline's mesh armor flared in rarely displayed agitation. "Visit my office, and then let me decide," he said quietly, turning and quickly leaving the conference room.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Fractalserpent for the comment about misfit toys in "Slipping to Horizontal" that inspired the title for this installment, and to Sphinx01 for the suggestion regarding a oneshot with Mirage.


End file.
